Dismantling the patriarchy…one drink at a time!

LUPEC: SWEET SWEDE

Recent LUPEC inductee Heather Mojer turned a year older Wednesday! We raise a glass to this lovely bartending lady and to her chosen cocktail moniker, a tipple that was until recently extinct: Swedish Punsch.

Not to be confused with “punch,” the liqueur evolved from Batavia Arrack, a red rice-and-sugar cane based spirit native to Southeast Asia. The Swedish East India Company is responsible for importing the stuff, which eventually became beloved by Swedes far and wide. “To mollify the sailors on board the ships, they let them dive into the Batavia Arrack that they brought back from the East Indies,” Eric Seed told theNew York Times last spring. “They would mix that with sugar and maybe a touch of the spice, and that grog they called their punch.”

Swedish Punsch began to be bottled sometime in the 19th century and was classically enjoyed warm with pea soup as a Thursday night tradition. By the early 20th century Americans were putting it in—you guessed it—cocktails. As the story so often goes, Prohibition killed any momentum the category had and it was obsolete stateside until very recently.

Could selecting a nearly extinct tipple as her LUPEC name be more in keeping with our mission to breed, raise, and release endangered cocktails into the wild? We think not. For that we salute you, Heather—happy birthday!

Raise a glass and go pay Heather a visit at Hungry Mother, where she’ll surely mix you up something fancy with the stuff.